The trendy new Bedminster cafe serving chicken hearts and pig’s trotters for breakfast

Chicken hearts with pig’s trotters for breakfast and bottles of cider for £7.50? If Lucky Strike isn’t the first sign of huge changes in Bedminster, I don’t know what is.

Actually, they missed a trick at Lucky Strike. For a cafe within striking distance of the old red-brick Wills tobacco factory in East Street, you’d a thought they would have named it after a coughing and wheezing Bedminster-made cigarette rather than a vintage American brand.

Woodbine, Navy Cut, Gold Flake, Capstan … there were certainly plenty of retro Bristol brands to choose from instead of Lucky Strike, which is more associated with Hollywood smokers like Clark Gable and Bette Davis, as well as Don Johnson in Miami Vice.

But I guess it’s still an apt name for this retro-style cafe and restaurant sandwiched between a butchers shop and a Thai massage parlour.

With its glazed red tile frontage and half-window ruffle of net curtain, Lucky Strike has a timeless look. To the casual passer-by, it looks like it could have been there since the 1950s, not a few weeks.

This is the first venture from Tom Montgomery and chef Matthew Nicholson, who met when they worked at Souk Kitchen opposite the Tobacco Factory in North Street.

Matthew also worked at top Bristol restaurants Little French, The Kensington Arms and Spiny Lobster, while Tom previously worked at highly regarded London restaurants BAO and Brat before returning to Bristol to open his first place.

Although essentially a daytime venue, Lucky Strike is also open a few evenings a week with a different menu, which makes it the first decent place to eat after dark on this stretch of East Street.

So far, most of the customers have come from Windmill Hill and Southville, but the owners says part of the appeal to open in such an unlikely spot next to deserted St Catherines Place shopping precinct is the huge developments going on around the area.

The cafe is opposite the former Argos store, which is being redeveloped into flats, and a new 500-capacity music venue.

Walk around the corner and there are blocks of student flats being built at Bedminster Green and lots more to be built in the area over the coming months.

The owners of this modern greasy spoon cafe have clearly read the tea leaves and worked out that now is the time to open and establish themselves before everybody else wants to buy a site in East Street.

Inside, it’s a no-frills place with parquet-effect flooring, functional furniture, a few black and white photos with Bristol links - Cary Grant, Concorde etc - and an open kitchen at the far end.

The menus during the day and in the evening are concise and quite limited, but I can only guess they are trialling dishes to see what works and what doesn’t.

At dinner, there’s ham (from Kelvins butchers next door) with vegetables and ‘butcher’s sauce’ for £12 and a vegan shepherd’s pie for £8. Desserts include rice pudding (£4.50) with a blob of jam the way your nan would have done it.

There are cocktails, wines and a short choice of bottled beers and ciders, although £7 for Newcastle Brown Ale or £7.50 for Thatcher’s Gold is sure to raise a few eyebrows from Bemmy locals.

Those same eyebrows might also elevate at a starter of half a grapefruit for £2 and a plate of ‘Lucky Hoops’ on toast for £4.50 (or £5.50 if you want grated Cheddar on top).

I went for the signature breakfast dish of square sausage, black pudding and tattie scone sandwich (£7). It was a generous handful, the soft bun layered with the herby sausage meat, spicy black pudding and slice of buttery potato scone.

I also tried the chicken hearts and trotters (£5.50), a dish that appears on the breakfast and dinner menus.

Served in a bowl and topped with plain crisps, the chicken hearts were meaty and slightly chewy in the rich, gelatinous trotter stock.

It’s early days at Lucky Strike, and it’s not quite fully formed yet, but I think once they expand the menu with dishes the customers want to eat - rather than what the chefs want to cook - it may well become one of the most interesting new openings of 2023.

And perhaps they could start by serving a proper Full English for breakfast and just use high quality ingredients to make it stand out as the best version in south Bristol? Give the people what they want.

Like those famous cigarettes, Lucky Strike is going to be a slow burner, but it also has the long-term potential to be one of the hottest tickets around. It’s certainly one to file under ‘one to watch’.

Lucky Strike, 61 East Street, Bedminster, Bristol, BS3 4HB.